Author James Bamford, regarded as an authority on the National Security Agency, made it clear in an interview with the website SFGate.com published Tuesday where he stands in the ongoing debate over leaker Edward Snowden.
“With regard to the information he released on domestic surveillance, I consider him a whistleblower,” Bamford wrote in an email. “He revealed details of massive violations by the NSA of the privacy rights of all Americans. The NSA has no constitutional right to secretly obtain the telephone records of every American citizen on a daily basis, subject them to sophisticated data mining and store them forever. It’s time government officials are charged with criminal conduct, including lying to Congress, instead of going after those exposing the wrongdoing.”
Bamford, who’s penned a number of books on the NSA, expressed the same sentiment in an interview last month with Gwen Ifill of PBS.
“Well, he’s definitely a whistleblower,” Bamford said of the 30-year-old former government contractor. “He’s not profiting from this in any way. He’s going to be harmed very severely because of this.”
